


Second Grace

by ignaz



Category: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Genre: F/M, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:11:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignaz/pseuds/ignaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richie lies awake for a long time after Margot leaves, prostrate on the sleeping bag, staring at the bright yellow ceiling of the tent and thinking hazily about Margot's lips and Margot's hair; about how she looked stepping off the Green Line bus, late as always, to meet him at the port, with her mouth in a straight line and only her eyes smiling; about her crying and kissing his hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Grace

**Author's Note:**

> For smithereen in Yuletide 2007, with extreme gratitude to c. for talking me through my pre-story short-circuiting.

Richie lies awake for a long time after Margot leaves, prostrate on the sleeping bag, staring at the bright yellow ceiling of the tent and thinking hazily about Margot's lips and Margot's hair; about how she looked stepping off the Green Line bus, late as always, to meet him at the port, with her mouth in a straight line and only her eyes smiling; about her crying and kissing his hand.

When he falls asleep, he dreams about the two of them under a bench at the Public Archives, Margot reading by flashlight.

The next morning he wakes up early, replaces the javelina head on the wall in the stairwell, and leaves the house on Archer Avenue, shorn like a lamb, feeling reborn.

\--

"Eli's gone," he says.

She comes back to the tent the next evening to listen to records with him. They get halfway through _Chelsea Girl_ before either of them speaks.

"What do you mean?"

"We tried to have an intervention. He climbed out the window and escaped."

She bows her head. "Oh, Eli."

He's sitting on the floor, she on the sleeping bag. He brings his knees close to his chest and stares at her. "Why do we have to be secretly in love with each other?"

"Because," she says, and stops there, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging, unsure whether it wants to be maternally authoritative or simply unsure of itself.

"Is it because of what people would say?"

She takes a cigarette out of her purse and puts it between her lips but doesn't light it. "You talked to Dad," she says accusingly.

"Did he talk to you?"

"He took me out for ice cream and tried to have a conversation about it. What did he say to you?"

"He gave his blessing."

"That means a lot to me," she says flatly.

His newly sheared head and shaved jaw still feel strangely light to him. Liberated of his hair and beard, he's like a Buddhist monk entering an order. Almost the entire rest of the human body, cells and tissues all, die and regrow and replace themselves every few weeks. He is not the same person now that he was when he was born; his body has regenerated itself many times over. But his hair and beard remained, a biological registry of his life for the last several years, and only now that they're gone is he truly renewed.

"Why does it have to be a secret?" To her silence he adds, "Is it because of Eli?"

"No. Anyway, we already broke it off even before you went to the hospital." She can't bring herself to say why he went there.

"Is it because of Raleigh?"

"We're getting divorced."

"I'm sorry," he says sincerely. He actually does like Raleigh, even if Raleigh did sort of steal Margot away from him. Eli stole her, too, and Richie still loves him like a brother. He's been told on more than one occasion that he loves too much.

"It's probably for the best. He'll be happier this way."

"Did you love him?"

"I thought I did. I guess I was wrong."

He swallows. "Did you love Eli?"

Margot looks away, pulls the cigarette from her mouth, and sets it aside. "I loved what that I thought I could get from Eli. I was wrong."

"What did you think you could get from him?"

"I don't know, Richie," she says, her face furrowed with pain. "I'm confused."

She turns to him with hollow eyes, and he reaches out to put a hand on her knee. She puts her hand over his, and then grabs his arm and tugs him forward until he comes to sits by her side on the sleeping bag. Then she kisses him, her mouth warm and sweet.

"This is just the way it has to be," she says simply. "If you really love me, you already know that."

They sit quietly for a while, the only sound that of guitar and cello strings. Margot stares at his sleeves, and he knows that she's looking right through them at the red gashes and stitches underneath. When she speaks, it's in a whisper. "Promise me you won't do it again."

"I promise," he lies.

"I have to go," she says a minute later. She stands, half crouching, and slinks out of the tent.

\--

Margot moves her things out of Raleigh's house and into the house on Archer Avenue. Dudley carries the boxes up the stairs and they accumulate unpacked just inside Margot's door, or at least that's what Richie sees when he happens to catch a glimpse inside her room. Margot and Raleigh's divorce is finalized the same day as their parents', and then there are wedding preparations to be made for Mom and Henry: invitations to be made and mailed, caterers and musicians to call.

He still sleeps in the tent, even though his bedroom is unoccupied since Dad left. Most nights, Margot comes to sit with him and read or listen to music, but they never talk about the fact that they're secretly in love with each other.

They talk about other secrets, though, or at least Margot does: about what she did when she ran away from school, about her first marriage, about all the places she's been and the things she's done that nobody else knows. Once Margot starts talking it's like she can't stop, like her dam of silence breaks and all the secrets come flooding out, a torrent of Margot Tenenbaum. Richie learns more about her in those evening hours than he'd ever known in the whole rest of his life, and none of it makes him love her any less.

Margot herself is Richie's only secret, and they can't talk about that.

Sometimes she kisses him there in the tent, and sometimes they hold each other on top of the sleeping bag they took to the museum. Sometimes she stays with him most of the night, just talking, and doesn't crawl out of the tent to go back to her own room until just before dawn.

They are the best and worst weeks of Richie Tenenbaum's entire life.

\--

After Eli crashes his car into the front of the house on the day of the wedding and everything descends into chaos, he and Margot sneak up to the roof. She smiles shyly at him and reveals the loose brick where she used to hide her stash, and they smoke a pair of decade-old cigarettes together, her hand resting on his shoulder and Mordecai perched on his outstretched hand.

It's cool up there, the wind making Margot's hair sway and ruffling Mordecai's feathers; a minute later, Margot scoots closer, chin on his shoulder. He turns his head to kiss her warm forehead. Mordecai crouches and takes off, launching himself into flight.

Neither of them speaks for a while. What she finally says is, "I think there's something really wrong with me, Richie."

She starts to cry. In all their lives together he's only ever seen her cry twice, and both times were because of him. But he's only seen her smoke a cigarette twice, too, and apparently she's been doing that for twenty years, so maybe she's been crying because of him for decades.

He puts both arms around her and feels her tears dampening the collar of his shirt before she manages to stop. The next time she speaks, her voice is flat, without inflection, endearingly normal. "Why do you love me?"

He's flummoxed by the question. It's like asking him why he breathes air.

"I don't know," he says. "I just always have."

"That's what's wrong," she says, pulling away to look at him. "It's too comfortable. Too familiar. We were children together, Richie. It's not that I love you," she explains, "it's that I love you for all the wrong reasons. Because I'm comfortable with you. Because you make me feel like I'm ten years old again. Like we're both prodigies again."

"Why is that wrong?"

"Because that's not who we are anymore. We're trying to live in the past."

He stares at her, uncomprehending. He's never been as smart as her or Chas, never had a way with words, but she's looking at him so earnestly that he knows he should understand what she's telling him. Only he doesn't.

"But if the past is what makes us happy, why shouldn't we live there?" he asks.

She nods and smiles, and even more inexplicably says, "Exactly."

He gives up. "I don't follow."

"I want you to read something."

"What?"

"I finished a play."

Margot has always kept her cards close to her chest, but the joy on her face now positively radiates. It's infectious.

"How long has it been?" he asks.

"Seven years. I started this one four years ago. I finished it in two days last week." She gingerly wraps her arms around him and says to the side of his neck, "You're the only person who understands what it's like to be us. I know it's wrong to love you. I just don't care anymore."

He returns the embrace, burying his hands in her butterscotch fur coat and his nose in her wheat-blonde hair.

"There was a time when we were happy, wasn't there?" she asks. "I remember it. Do you?"

He holds her more tightly and he doesn't even have to remember.


End file.
